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When it comes to Great British game development, there are only a handful of studios that become household names. Rockstar, Bullfrog, Lionhead, Codemasters, Criterion, Rare, Team17, Sumo Digital, Rebellion, Rocksteady, Playground games, Frontier, Traveller’s Tales, Media Molecule, Free Radical Design, Psygnosis, and finally, Creative Assembly. Between them all, there are groundbreakers, game-changers, and visionaries in the field of gaming. Most recently, NoClip has done a feature-length documentary on Creative Assembly, discussing the early days of the studio porting FIFA to PC, starting the Shogun: Total War series, Sega’s buyout, and a little of Alien Isolation.

Since the 2000s, the studio has been pumping out the real-time and turn-based tactics series of Total War like my local baker pumps out cakes. I guess the only difference is the lack of my mass-mastication of their work. Like most, when I was a kid I didn’t have the patience, time, or PC to run some games properly. So now as the year I have to search for on age verification pages get a lot longer, I lean increasingly towards the “Dad games,” and I enjoy turn-based games a little more. I have even started looking at the Total War series of games. You may have also noticed by the title, I’m going to talk about the Epic Games Store.

Announced on Tuesday afternoon, Creative Assembly will be releasing a new Total War Saga game. It will be the second game in the series to get this moniker with Total War: Shogun 2‘s standalone expansion retroactively getting the title too. Total War Saga: Troy is the first game in the series to be set in the Bronze age, as we stepped forward into the Neolithic age. That just means instead of some men in funny hats in France, Rome, Japan, or the Three Kingdoms; we’ll instead be getting to invade the modern-day town of Tevfikiye, otherwise known as Troy.

However, it is not just men hiding in big wooden ponies that some are suspicious over, it is Epic’s involvement. No, we’re apparently not over this mess. Total War Saga: Troy will be an Epic Games Store exclusive for a full year. Cue the angry conspiracy theories, as well as the stupid and unqualified statements. It is not just an exclusive for a year, it will also be free to keep for the first 24 hours. Yes, that is a new game, fully released that is completely free-to-keep, all for the simple asking price of downloading a launcher that you don’t have to use for anything other than booting up this one game.

Tim Heaton, Chief Studios Officer at SEGA said, “Thanks to Epic, we’re able to offer a Total War title for free on its launch day. It’s a hugely exciting thing for us to be able to do for our players.” He went on to state, “Not only does this mean that we can bring the tales and legends of TROY to a wide audience through Epic’s massive platform, but it also means new players will get to try Total War for the first time, experiencing the unique gameplay that the series is famous for.”

Total War Saga: Troy will exclusively launch for PC on the Epic Games Store on Tuesday, August the 13th, 2020. For those first 24-hours, players will be able to redeem the game and keep it for free. Those who wish to buy the game on Steam will have to wait until August of 2021.

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